


Disposable

by inK_AddicTion



Category: Steven Universe (Cartoon)
Genre: Dubious Consent, Explicit Language, F/F, Grief/Mourning, Slavery, Suicide, for a tumblr anon
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-03-22
Updated: 2017-07-31
Packaged: 2018-10-09 08:17:42
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 7
Words: 14,748
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10407837
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/inK_AddicTion/pseuds/inK_AddicTion
Summary: In which it was Yellow Diamond who was shattered by the rebellion, leaving behind an oppressive mantle and a broken regime. Ten of her replacements narrate the beginning of a new colony on a lifeless planet and the end of the Authority as they know it.





	1. Tank

The massive freighter’s hold was rammed full of disposable diamonds. It was completely silent. The wheeze and clatter of the poorly maintained engines was fully audible through the thin walls of hastily repaired metal which was dented and warped from bad landings. It would discharge its cargo and labour off without as much as a backward glance.

Ten of them were packed together and standing, elbows jostling in the too small space. Golden hair gleamed irregularly in the dim and flickering lights. They had come from the same planet, these ten, long ago emerging side-by-side. Tank hadn’t seen any of them in so long, not since the last time that they had all been required to prepare another planet for colonisation. Most of the time only a few were needed. They were the shock troops and the first to break the ground. Now they were together again, to conquer again in the name of the perfect Diamond Authority.

“Are we there yet?” An excited voice piped up, only to be rapidly shushed. Nevertheless, as soon as one spoke, the others felt like they could too.

Tank said nothing as cautious whispers broke out. She kept her large calloused hands folded in front of her, sturdy feet planted apart to withstand the shaking and rocking of the ship. Steadfastly Tank ignored the shaking of the particularly skinny diamond next her compulsively picking at her shredded nails. Every so often, Shaky patted Tank’s arm, as thick around as a tree trunk, as if to reassure herself that she was still there.

Tank didn’t know if they were far from landing. Tank didn’t know why this shaky diamond was so worried. Tank didn’t know what this colony planet would be like. Only that it was dead and needed terraforming on the scale that only the Diamonds could provide. The noisiness grated on her. She asked no questions. No one had ever answered them, anyway. Tank was of the silent and unbothered opinion that all things that it was necessary for her to know would be revealed to her.

In her usual station in the deep dark blackness of a hollowed out planet, turning a pump continuously to generate electricity for hours and hours and hours and hours in the unchanging darkness, there was no need for thought or speech. It was unnecessary for a service diamond to think. So Tank didn’t.

She had been created to work, not question.

Eventually, they landed and went outside to line up. There was more before that, and more after it, but it hardly seemed to matter. They arranged themselves in designation order. Tank stood next to Flank, her twin in all but gem, and they exchanged the silent but deeply satisfactory nods of the truly mute. And then they waited.

The colony planet had very little atmosphere and the ground consisted of dead rock. Everything was brown, or grey, in particularly sullen shades. As a colony, it was currently little use to Homeworld, being as dead as it was, which was why they were there to prepare it. It was faster to use the strength of the Diamonds themselves. Only diamonds could withstand the song of other diamonds.

The perfect ones took their time arriving. No one important was waiting for them after all. The luxury ship was visible for almost a full hour before it eventually coasted down to a smooth landing. It was almost another hour more before the plank could be bothered to extend for the Diamond Authority to disembark.

A stir shivered through the line as the three ruling Diamonds of Homeworld left the shelter of the ship. Instantly, the ten yellow diamonds snapped into crisp salutes. They stared stolidly straight forward.

Pink Diamond was first off. She leapt right from the gangplank with a laugh. She knelt and ran her fingers through the soil. The light of the sun silhouetted her. She looked so alive, as if something parasitic in her drank the vigour from her surroundings and made it all appear so dead.

White Diamond followed her at a more sedate pace. Her cold grey eyes first evaluated the line of diamonds with a critical eye and her lip curled in the faintest displeasure. Nonetheless, she turned away from them without a rebuke to gesture into the darkness of the ship.

“Come along, Blue,” she ordered.

The last diamond emerged. She was imperfect and tiny, half the size of White and Pink. She blinked in the sunlight blankly and she was shrouded head to toe in dark blue drapes. A dullness seemed to come into the air where she lurched. She looked constantly on the verge of falling over. She barely seemed to recognise where she was and yet it was for her and her alone that the ten yellow diamonds straightened. A sigh drifted down their ranks.

Tank lifted her head and straightening her shoulders. She had been created to work, and work she would without complaint, but even she would not deny the special pleasure of working with Blue Diamond herself to create a useful planet for Homeworld’s struggling resources.

The Diamond Authority’s Yellow Diamond had loved Blue Diamond too, which was nothing special, except that Blue Diamond had loved her back.

And now she was gone, and there were ten of her.


	2. Sweetie

Sweetie was trying her hardest not to fidget. It was very difficult though, because everything was so exciting! There was big wide-open skies, and land all around for miles and miles, and the Diamond Authority were right there, right there in front of them  _(them! Service diamonds!)_! She stared longingly at the far distant horizon, imagining running herself breathless with laughter until she was too tired to go on.

But the Diamonds were speaking now, and Sweetie tried her best to pay attention.  _(Really! She did! But there was so much to see and –)_ Pink was very pretty, Sweetie thought candidly, prettier even than the last time she had seen her. She had forgotten how just being in White’s presence made her feel shivery and nervous inside, like she couldn’t wait to get to work and prove to them how much she loved them, especially sad small little Blue, who Sweetie desperately wanted to see smiling. Sweetie was sure that she had a lovely smile, but Blue Diamond only seemed to want to cry.

“Let’s get this party started, shall we?” Pink Diamond suggested, and Sweetie saw her tongue dart out to wet her lips as she grinned. Sweetie beamed back, trying to catch Pink Diamond’s eye. She could appreciate that! Parties were good fun. (Sweetie had never been to a proper one, because none of the other gems liked yellow diamonds very much, but she hoped to one day!)

“Pay attention, sunny-girl,” Cheeky hissed, gripping Sweetie’s arm and yanking her back a few steps. “Or you wanna be crushed?”

Bewildered, Sweetie blinked at her, but Cheeky was scowling dreadfully at the three Diamond Authority, and another yellow diamond, Navy, who for some reason had stepped up to join them, looking sick and anxious. No one seemed happy any more. Sweetie decided that Cheeky probably knew what was going on better than she did – she was ever so wise sometimes, even if half the time she spent making silly jokes – and half hid behind her, watching with very wide and round eyes.

Pink Diamond and White Diamond were circling each other with slow, slinking steps, giving each other a hooded look. Then they joined hands, and their bodies moved together across the tamped down earth, and White lifted Pink and crushed her to her chest, and Pink made a little gasp and touched White’s cheeks. Their mouths smashed together and their gems started to glow hotly.

Sweetie found herself blushing, and didn’t know why. She felt compelled to turn her eyes away, suddenly found herself very aware of Cheeky’s hand still holding her arm tight. She tentatively placed the flat edges of the gem on her palm over Cheeky’s hand.

Cheeky glanced sidelong at her, noticed the look on her face, and grinned a little. “Gettin’ hot off a free lightshow, sunny-girl?”

Sweetie wasn’t sure what she would reply, but at that moment, Pink Diamond broke free of White with a victorious blaze in her dark eyes, her gem shining as fiercely as a supernova. Not to be left for a moment, White embraced her from behind, her hands skimming up and down Pink’s sides. Pink stretched one hand behind her to pull White’s hair and yank her teeth away from Pink’s neck.

Pink beckoned commandingly. “Get over here, Blue,” she hissed, her voice wild and strange with excitement.

Blue Diamond was dazedly hovering by the ship they had arrived in, clutching convulsively at her cloaks in a repetitive pattern, and as she looked up at her name, Sweetie saw her entire body shudder. Blue shook her head, minutely, and began to back away. She didn’t look happy or enthusiastic at all. Sweetie bit her lip worriedly.

“Blue!” Pink snarled, and she didn’t sound so kind and sweet anymore. In fact, she didn’t sound nice at all.

“I- I don’t want to,” Blue whispered in a papery voice, “Don’t – you can’t-“

Sweetie didn’t think she liked this anymore. Blue looked scared, upset, she was already crying again. But the other two Diamonds didn’t seem sympathetic, they seemed annoyed. The feeling of wrongness bubbled up inside Sweetie, and she grasped at Cheeky with huge worried eyes and a wobbly lip. Cheeky turned suddenly and held her, wrapping her in a strong hug that looked nothing like the groping hold White had on Pink. Sweetie discovered that she much preferred it.

“Probably best that you don’t watch this, sunflower,” Cheeky told her roughly, and Sweetie closed her eyes obediently.

She was forced to wrench them open again when Blue screamed. Almost against her will, Sweetie turned and stared, horrified and sickened and confused. Navy, her golden face set in grim lines and her eyes flat and cold, had hold of Blue, and was wrestling her into Pink and White’s arms. Blue was fighting tooth and nail, shrieking, hitting out wildly. With quick, efficient movements, White trapped her arms in her cloak and Pink thrust her against White’s chest, keeping Blue pinned between their bodies. It was clear that they had done this before, and Blue knew it, knew she had lost.

 _“No, no – you can’t make me-“_ Blue was moaning, but the fight had gone out of her, and as she sagged, so her gem dimly started to flicker and glow reluctantly.

“This is necessary,” White told her firmly. “We no longer have resources to waste on doing this the  _clean_ way.”

“Why are they- why are they hurting each other, Cheeky, why are-?” Sweetie whispered urgently.

“Hush, sunny-girl,” Cheeky grated out.

Pink snapped her fingers, and Navy gulped, shot a last hopeless glance back at the other yellow diamonds waiting patiently in line, then stepped up to join her. Pink’s free hand grabbed hold of her hair and pulled Navy forward, forcing her to stumble and cry out as the four of them exploded into white light.

The cry was taken into the glowing wobbling mass of fusing gems, warping horrendously into a tortured shriek and then down into a throaty purr, back up to a cut-glass shriek. The nexus of the light grew taller, and taller, and taller, until the forming Red Diamond was so titanic that Sweetie could barely even see her head, huger than anything she had ever seen before. A strange, innocent awe possessed her, and Sweetie gaped.

She was so big! She was bigger even than the towers on Homeworld that scraped the sky!

The fusion staggered a moment, and her footsteps shook the earth. But then Red Diamond straightened, and an awful coldness settled over her remote face as she remembered her purpose. Adopting a perfect choral position, Red straightened, opened her mouth, and began to sing a song of preparation. The sound reached them, clear and strong and so achingly beautiful that it made their gems glow spontaneously. This one was a song of searching, for identifying falls and faults in the soil before Red set to work.

Sweetie held onto herself and let the soothing feeling wash over her in waves, restoring the faltering joy and happiness. Some part of her knew dimly that it was manufactured happiness, but she was so new and raw in the eyes of it that it hardly seemed to matter, and it swept over her like a flood. She found herself unable to stop laughing as the world underneath her feet began to change rapidly indeed. The other yellow diamonds formed rings and danced, adding their own useless voices to that spirit-sundering cry.

The song ended with the sudden finality of death. Red crouched down then, her great crimson eyes opening and focusing with unnerving intensity on the yellow diamonds smaller than ants around her. They dashed about her, drawing coils of rope out of their gems and flinging them over Red’s spare sets of arms, lashing themselves to the enormous fusion. Sweetie anchored herself to Red’s second right wrist, holding a terrified Shaky tight. Chills glowered at her for sharing, and Sweetie stuck out her tongue.

When Red straightened and started to sing again, the bass vibrations through their bodies would have made any weaker gem poof. Shaky shuddered and glitched, but Sweetie grinned and sang too, sweet and high.

This was the song of shaping. It would rip through the planet, and reform it into the image of Red’s eye. Already, weather patterns were gathering, thick clouds pregnant with rain. It was quicker than the careful terraforming Homeworld had practised before, but it came with its own costs.

Red Diamond sang, and the world shook itself apart and reformed in the shape of her desire.  Cracks appeared in sturdy mountains that had lasted for millennia on this dusty rock, water ripped great canyons through the earth, magma bubbled and boiled and erupted. The face of the world underwent drastic plastic surgery in a matter of hours. Red sifted through the workable materials of the world and brought to the surface, churning through the soil and preparing it for plough in the same instant.

And clinging to her like parasites, the nine yellow diamonds sang along and held on for dear life.


	3. Flank

Flank was standing sentry when Red unfused. It was an ornamental position, but the perfect Diamonds enjoyed nothing so much as appearance, so there she stood, huge and hulking in front of the temporary lodgings that their builders had erected whilst Red sung and worked over the far reaches of colony planet’s globe.

The other yellow diamonds had collected in clumps. Flank had been watching the five who had chosen to stay outside.

Earnest Noisy, the gem on her forehead flashing belligerently, was arguing stridently with freckled, pretty Curly, named for the mop of curls that cascaded around her cheeks, whose sleazy suggestions to Noisy’s carefully logical points made Noisy fume impotently with embarrassed anger. Chills was watching, arms crossed, a sardonic smile on her lips. Cheeky and Sweetie had been playing tag for over an hour; Sweetie required exhaustive exercise to settle down enough over their rest periods, the hyperactive diamond was likely to annoy them all to distraction otherwise. Copy and Shaky were inside, no doubt Shaky was sticking like a burr to Tank’s shadow, and Copy was off finding the darkest corner to hide her regrettable face in before the perfect Diamonds came back.

And Navy… was inside Red, her gem alongside Pink’s perfect one in Red’s belly.

A faint smile lifted her solemn face. She liked knowing where all her sisters were. She liked being with them again. Their noise, their presence, the inescapable light that came with having ten gems able to glow and smile and touch was as far apart from her lonely station in the dark as it was possible to be.

Like Tank, Flank worked in the bowels of one of the more recent colony planets that had not had their predecessor’s brilliance in designing the secrets of flowing electricity and technology that were now lost to them. In the fetid darkness, she turned a pump without pause or break for days and days that all blurred together. In the emptiness at the bottom of the mineshaft her station occupied, her voice echoed as if the lyrical poetry she hummed to herself by the mechanic beat of the pump was sung back by an orchestra of stone and silence.

She tapped a slight beat against her thigh, just above her gem, turning words over in her mind, trying to find a way to fit them together so that centuries from now, the sun against her skin and the shouts of her sisters would still exist in her poetry, even as the warmth and colours of it faded from her memory.

The day’s light was bleeding slowly, so she immortalised that in verses about the orange and the gold of the clouds Red had summoned, exhaustively detailed in only the way someone who lived in blind darkness could appreciate. Already, the closest stars were visible in the faint dusky hues behind the flagrant pageant of the clouds, like flecks of spittle spat by some celestial diamond above even the most perfect of worldly diamonds.

The darkness of the sinking sun outlined the three staggering shapes that had emerged from the cacophonous light show that was Red unfusing. White Diamond was walking slightly slower than usual, and her cape hung limply at her heels, exhausted. Pink’s colours were as faded as three-week old petals, curling up with rot, and the gleam in her eyes was subdued and empty. Navy hung off one of Pink’s shoulders, unconscious, her skin the sallow colour of long gone off milk, her luxuriously long rich copper and gold hair in limp and grey strands. Pink dragged her favourite servant like a sack of flour, uncaring of the way Navy’s heels kicked up mud and her hair knotted and tangled with dust.

When they reached Flank, White brushed past immediately, storming to the room set aside for her. Pink dropped Navy carelessly in front of Flank, stepping over Navy’s prone body without a second thought. Once she was gone, Flank knelt down and put her hand against Navy’s pale and drawn cheek, smoothing the dusty hair from her face. She was arguably the most beautiful of them, with her small breasts, slender frame, and her long red-gold hair, Pink had smugly told them it was her gem’s placement on her navel, like Pink’s own, that made her so. It was no secret that her service was Pink’s favourite, if only for the frequency with which it was requested.

Navy stirred slightly, turning her face away. She started to curl into a ball, but froze with a pained gasp. She flinched when Flank touched her shoulder, like an injured fawn. Flank waited until a dim recognition had crept into Navy’s hazy honey eyes before smiling at her questioningly.

“They just overworked me,” Navy breathed, by way of explanation for her state. “I can’t resist, not like that – she always takes too much… I can never resist her.” She blinked, and suddenly her eyes shone with tears.

The door opened, and Chills stood uncertainly in the light. The surly and often taciturn diamond did not speak, only jerked her head at Flank and then knelt beside Navy, shaking her with what would be called gentleness, had it been any other gem.

Navy moaned faintly when Chills lifted her into her arms, and she curled into the touch like a cat. Flank let them go. Chills wouldn’t mistreat her – of all the yellow diamonds, she was likely the only one able to understand. For all that Chills was as cold and reserved as her control over the fire that was their element was the opposite, Flank had also never seen her be unreasonably cruel.

Navy was safe, and White and Pink had gone to their set rooms to relax however they pleased. But Blue had never returned.

It was full dark when Flank left, and the night was soft and a little cold, wind whispering over the soil of the great barren plains. It was deathly silent, and smelled of churned earth and freshly broken rock. No life save gem life had ever or would ever live to breathe on this deserted colony planet. Shoulders of aloof rock rose stonily against the crescent slice of the moon’s brightness. The stars lit her way, their pallid light enough to see where cracked and splintered boulders left hazards for unwary feet. The sky itself was a bruised purple black, not quite the complete enveloping black of utter darkness. The greys and browns of the rock and the soil smudged into one another until the world looked like an intermediate tapestry of crumbling texture, smashed together. Walking through it felt like experiencing a series of unconnected moments, placed slice after glass thin slice after one another so that it seemingly flowed yet remained distinctly separate and jarring all the same.

The crying, whilst nearly inaudible, alerted Flank almost immediately to where Blue Diamond lay crumpled, used and discarded like an old tissue. The shape of her was barely visible in the low light, the rise and fall of her curvaceous hip, the pale splay of her tangled hair, the gleam of yellow in the column of her throat. She lay as she had fallen, her cloak not quite covering her, her head left bare and face turned into the dirt, shaking.

And she cried, and cried, and cried. It was tired sort of grief, fresh and raw still, incapacitating in its intensity, yet familiar and old. She breathed in cracked and whispering gasps, unable to move or breathe in the grip of mourning.

Flank said nothing, but stood and waited for Blue Diamond to notice that she was there. It took a while. The night sky deepened and went from purple to a dark and grim blue, shadowed by ugly greys. The clouds thickened and became woolly, and it started to rain. The still slightly acidic droplets were thin and sharp and seemed to bite at Flank’s skin, but she welcomed the new feeling. Her hair was plastered to her skull and her clothes were dripping by the time Blue opened her eyes and saw her, a great yellow figure silhouetted in the darkness.

For a moment she paused, then she let out a wounded cry, as if she had just been punched or stabbed. Flank watched her, feeling pity stir inside her. She did not look anything like their predecessor, but she was tall and broad, her skin and eyes were tawny gold, and in the darkness with eyes blurred by tears for an instant, a grieving lover could be fooled into mistaking them.

Flank had never had a lover, but she knew that her sisters were the only brightness in her heart for when the long dark came, and she loved them as much as she loved the sun that shared their colours, even the cruel and ugly parts of them. She could not say what the differences between her love and being in love were, if there were any, but she thought about going back to the long empty darkness of her station in the mineshaft and never having any possibility of seeing her sisters again, and wondered how Blue could possibly bear her grief.

She sat down cross-legged, and stretched her hand out slowly on the ground in front of Blue, close enough to touch. Then she glanced away, tightly controlled, as if Blue was a wild animal in need of taming with trust displays. There was certainly something feral enough about the way she wept.

A wet cheek shifted, and pressed against the thick brutish knuckles of Flank’s hand. Blue wept for her own weakness to simple kindness, but she didn’t resist when Flank turned, and with the utmost gentleness, gathered her against her chest. Flank held Blue as delicately as if she were spun from gossamer frost, a creation of dew-permanence, liable to be blown away in the barest wind. The caged strength of her massive arms and barrel chest cradled this tiny, broken diamond, one huge hand bigger than Blue’s entire skull, as soft to her as bird bones.

Tenderly, Flank smoothed Blue’s matted hair, the clumsiness of her stubby fingers softened by the gentle intent. She started to hum, at a low, soothing frequency, knowing Blue would hear nothing but would feel the vibrations through her chest. Blue’s thin fingers clutched convulsively at an area just below Flank’s collarbones, where her predecessor’s gem would have been, and she cried, the tears on her cheeks mixing with the rain.

Eventually, Blue cried herself out. She still hiccupped the occasional rasping sob, but her eyes had gone dull and deadened. Wary of breaching boundaries, Flank wiped her thumb under Blue’s wet eyes, cleaning away her tears. A few more leaked out at her action, and Flank attempted to smile at her. Numbly, Blue kept her cheek against where Yellow Diamond’s gem would have been, and ignored her. Flank held her a while longer, shifting from stroking her hair to rubbing her back. She knew the moment that Blue had had enough, because her back tensed, and she spoke, icy-cold.

“Bring me to my rooms.” Nothing more, nothing less. It was all Flank needed, though, the tacit admission that Blue wasn’t strong enough to walk there alone.

Her weight was nothing to Flank, who carried her like a child, taking care to keep her steps as even and measured as she could. Blue started crying again as they approached the base, but it was silent crying, and she pulled her hood down over her face to hide it.

Her hiding was for nothing though, as when Flank opened the door and walked into the grand circular room at the centre of the base, the only one there was Navy, unconscious against a wall. Someone had washed the dust from her hair, because she glimmered faintly in the light like the heart of the fire. All the other yellow diamonds had cleared off to a ramshackle barracks erected haphazardly against the side of the building. Flank wondered if they had left Navy there so that should Pink decided that she wanted her, she wouldn’t have to look far, or invade the precious security of the service barracks. Flank frowned. She loved her sisters, but it felt like cowardly act born of self-preservation, and irritated her.

But right now, Blue needed Flank more.

The quarters for the perfect Diamonds were laughably small compared to their palaces on Homeworld, but they were still as ornate and pleasing as the yellow diamonds could make them in the limited time they had had. Blue’s was at the end of the hall, the darkest end, and there was a skylight that Flank had watched Curly install earlier to light it with the radiance of the moon rather than any unnatural light – though there was, of course, lamps evenly spaced between the deep marine blue drapes if Blue wanted them. The effect, they hoped, would be like an underwater cave, safe and close.

At Blue’s direction, Flank brought her to the bed and laid her on it, hesitating for only a moment as Blue bade her leave.

Flank wanted to stay. She didn’t want to leave Blue Diamond alone to her tears and her silence and her memories of a dead gem, utterly without comfort. It felt like abandoning Blue at the bottom of a mineshaft built of her own grief and sorrow, and with no yellow sister to draw her out again. But she also knew that Blue Diamond was well aware of the way the other yellow diamonds looked at her – guilty, furtive glances that betrayed their hunger – and that Blue could only misinterpret Flank’s desire to stay.

So she left, instead. Obedience had been drilled into her, she could no more disobey a perfect Diamond than she could shatter herself. Still, as she passed through the circular entrance room, she scooped up the sleeping Navy. If Pink Diamond couldn’t content herself alone for one evening, she could very well come to the barracks and _ask._


	4. Cheeky

Cheeky prodded the shuffling line of rose quartzes forwards, doing her best to ignore the subliminal buzz of their destabilising chains, the clank and rattle of the metal bonds that lashed them together into one hobbling group of slump-shouldered, dejected gems. They walked like dead things, stumbling along with hollow eyes welling with the tears that preserved their life. The one in front seem to rely on Cheeky’s eyes more than her own to see the path of baked flat soil ahead, holding the shoulder with her gem on stiffly as if it pained her.

It probably did, mused Cheeky, those destabilisers weren’t playing around. The thought of wearing them all the time made her shudder.

Still, all put together, it made her job as fun as flatulence at a funeral.

The machine Cheeky was carrying strapped to her waist chirped, informing her that she had gone the measured distance from her last stop. The injectors had to be evenly spaced with the nutrients the growing gems would need, nutrients that the rose quartzes would supply. The rose quartzes following her meekly halted, without curiosity. Feeling watched, Cheeky jabbed at the machine, squinting at the dim panel. Nearly out of charge.

“Here,” Cheeky said, and dug around in the pannier across her back. She came up with a fistful of seeds, which she hurled liberally around the marked out section. The seeds hissed as they fell, like accusing whispers, like a soft dry rain.

The leading rose quartz tilted her head up, and Cheeky avoided her sad eyes, focusing instead on the splotch of colour on her cheek and the prominent bucktooth visible between her plump lips.

“Make it rain, ladies.”

The roses quartzes spread out as far as they could with the chains, sat down on the ground, and began to cry in earnest. A few even placed their hands on the ground as if they were communing with it, making drawing-up motions. Uncomfortably, Cheeky averted her eyes. This part always made her gorge rise; the way they made the soil writhe as it accepted the seeds, the thick bulges of too-rapidly growing organics, it all seemed faintly a violation.

_And not the fun kind, either, unless grotesquery was your thing._

Instead, she scanned the flat horizon, trying vainly to spot Sweetie and Navy. They were out there somewhere, setting up injectors. It was pointless to try, it was dark, and she was closer to Curly’s group, anyway. Cheeky usually ignored Curly, though. She saw no reason to drop the habit just because Curly wasn’t in front of her.

The sky was a flat disc of angry black clouds, all swelling towards the looming stony cheek of the cliffs Red’s terraforming had created. Blue Diamond would be somewhere in there, directing the blue ribbon of thunderously rushing water that would be sluicing out of the narrow cranny between the cliffs towards the lake basin in front of their base, dampening the dead land enough for the rose quartzes’ fertilising healing tears to do the trick. Atop one cliff, a paleness could just be discerned through the thickening murk – White Diamond, working her wind-magic to create a stable atmosphere for the planet. Pink Diamond would be sifting through the rocks, bringing up the most favourable minerals for the gems she planned to grow, and was responsible for the occasional rocking tremors and groans of the shifting, cracking ground.

It was a primordial time for parasitic production.

Cheeky sighed, and looked back at the rose quartzes. Young trees were beginning to shoot up from the ground, like weeds, with soft fluffy heads and tender new buds. They needed thickening, but they were nearly spent, their colours already dimmer, quiet and haggard from exhaustion. One rose quartz had passed out, a pinkish lump on the ground.

Cheeky’s hand strayed the bull-whip coiled at her belt. For a moment, it lingered, ready to unleash the savage bite of the whip. _No._ The hand dropped.

Cockily, she sauntered to the rose quartz and nudged her with the toe of her boot. “We have a wilted flower over here, I see.”

The rose quartz struggled onto her knees, panting. Her springy curls were limp and plastered to her skull with overexertion, and her eyes were the hollowest of the group, empty and black. She stared dully up at Cheeky. Cheeky jerked her chin at her, and turned away as if she couldn’t see the rose quartz just collapsing to the ground again when she looked away.

Beating gems until they did their job, keeping an entire cut in servitude for the actions of one – well, it was a familiar position for a disposable diamond, but familiarity only bred more contempt. The others, Chills, Tank, even Copy didn’t really seem to care about it anymore, but Cheeky still fought not to be numbed to it. Because Sweetie picked up on Cheeky’s moods, and there was a reason Cheeky had swapped out every one of Sweetie’s escort shifts to put her on placing injectors, instead.

Cheeky never wanted Sweetie to be this. She was innocent, not stupid, and Cheeky relied on Sweetie’s brightness more than she wanted to admit. Sweetie reminded her to have hope, to reject the bitterness that too often crept into their disposable hearts. Pink Diamond was responsible for many horrors, but the creation of Sweetie and the rest of their cut could not be one of them.

_Except maybe Curly._

Besides, no one had wanted to pull injector duty with Navy, and Sweetie was one of the few who didn’t mind her. There was a certain hollowness to Navy that reminded Cheeky of the dead-eyed quartzes, and it was frankly disturbing. Being in close proximity to Navy was like walking a tightrope of Pink Diamond’s attention – there was always a fear that Navy would sell them out, whisper betrayals in Pink Diamond’s ear while Pink Diamond was filling  _other_ hollows in Navy – but she didn’t seem to mind Sweetie’s relentless optimism too much, and Cheeky hoped it was enough to stop her reporting Sweetie’s occasional lapses of concentration.

Cheeky wasn’t sure what she would do if that happened. Fling herself on Pink Diamond’s mercy and grovel, probably. _Heh. Pink Diamond’s “mercy” and White Diamond’s “justice”. For anyone else, they’d call it murder._ Volunteer to take whatever ‘corrective’ measure Pink Diamond dreamt up. Maybe take Sweetie and run – but where would they go? Two disposable diamonds, unskilled brutes fit only for hard work.  _And a pearl to rule us, I bet._  Shaking herself, Cheeky swallowed her disquieting thoughts. Even the possibility of doubting her obedience to the law of the perfect Diamonds was unnerving enough.

“That’s enough,” Cheeky told the rose quartzes. “We’re done for the day.”

It wasn’t as impressive as the first site they had done; the skinny conifers they’d called from the soil leaned every which way, quite unlike the stout, hirsute oaks and shaggy pines they’d spurred from richening dark soil, the truffles they’d planted, the rosemulch they’d accumulated. This spiny thicket was as depressing as it was barren, like a charlatan’s moustache, but it was enough for now. Any more and they were likely to drop. Or poof. It was such a hassle trying to pinch the tiny little gems up without shapeshifting down.

Cheeky took pity on them and let them rest in her cupped hands, fighting to keep them steady as she walked. The rose quartzes bundled on each other like proper quartzes, immediately dozing into the trancelike state of quiescence. She was concentrating so hard on keeping her hands steady in order to not drop them that when Curly hailed her with a yell, Cheeky startled.

_Wonderful._

Curly jogged over, her lascivious grin stretching her freckled cheeks, spotted all over like a duck egg. She had a damp pale stain down the front of her uniform, probably from the leaking injector she carried over one shoulder.

“Cheeks,” Curly greeted with a flounce of her coppery gold ringlets, “I see you were on prison duty today.” She put her hands on her hips and made a crude gyration. “Made lots of little organic babies with our soggy girls?”

“It’s my threatening mien,” Cheeky said mildly, “I scare the tears from ‘em until they’re dry. Wasn't Shaky on with you today?”

“Nothing’s dry with me about, I’ll tell you, I’ve made a rose quartz flood a lake and not with her tears. Shakes ran off, so I’ve been fertilising our soils here with my big purple shaft here all alone. She was all rigid and ready when she started, but, look, oh dear-” Curly cackled, hefting the leaky injector’s tip at Cheeky, “She’s gone a little limp _."_

Being careful not to drop the rose quartzes, Cheeky moved aside. “Knock it off, Curly!”

“Lighten up, Cheeks. I was just messing around, hey.” Curly squinted at the base, crouched squat and small on the wide, flat plain. “Looks like everyone else is still out.” She elbowed Cheeky. “Want to mess about? We could do it on White Diamond’s bed.” She sniggered.

“No thanks – that bed’s so frigid you’d freeze your tits off,” Cheeky remarked, and Curly roared with laughter, clapping Cheeky’s shoulder companionably.

They kept walking, Curly’s arm loosely dragging over Cheeky’s shoulder. Cheeky gritted her teeth and reminded herself that just because it felt like Curly’s hand was drifting down her back for a squeeze, it wasn’t necessarily true.

“I’ll tell you what,” Curly said after a moment’s silence, “I bet I’m welcome in Blue’s bed now. She’s been giving me the eye all afternoon, comes up pretty as you please for a close-up of my valiant miner here.” Curly waggled the injector.

Cheeky scoffed. “You’re full of chalk.”

Wounded, Curly withdrew her arm. Cheeky breathed near-silent relief. “I’m _not!_ I mean it. Wanted to know all about how they work, how _deep_ they go, the force they can push through. Yeah, she wasn’t talking about the injectors.”

“Curly, come _on.”_

“Her, I hope.”

“It’s Blue Diamond! She’s – they’re not like us. We may share some carbon structures but they’re gems of a different cut.”

“In the dark, all that matters is that we’ve got yellow skin. And she was interested enough in trying it on, today. Wanted to know everything about how they operated, how to get them _fired up.”_ Curly waggled her eyebrows. “I tell you true.”

“It’d be Copy, not you,” Cheeky retorted. “Copy’s the one who-“

“Fuck Copy! Maybe she wants a different gem for a change.” Finally irritated enough, Curly stalked off, muttering as she went. Cheeky bid her good riddance, but as Curly disappeared through the doors of the base, the full force of Cheeky’s disquiet hit her.

Curly interpreting flirtation where there was none was nothing new, but Blue Diamond showing an interest in the injectors was. She hadn’t ever shown an interest in anything apart from grief, as far as Cheeky knew.

 _Maybe she’s finally moving on,_ Cheeky thought hopefully, like Sweetie would. It didn’t feel as convincing as she wanted.


	5. Navy

Navy waited, arranged artfully on the bed like a doll. She was on her back, one hip propped up, leg languorously extended, the other coy knee leaning over her thigh. Her left hand idly smoothed circles over her solar plexus, above her gem but below her small breasts, clothing left loose and hair rippling down over her shoulders like a ruddy gold sheet. The feigned performance was a habit by now, the relaxation both real and lazy. Her boots had been placed neatly by the door, and her bare toes dug into the luxurious coverlet. She was enjoying the chance to sink her work-weary body into the give of the soft mattress.

Pink Diamond wasn’t even looking at her, standing at the window and blowing red smoke through it into the pale cream square of light sky outside. The red and the cream blended together, like evaporating blood on skin. Navy was unconcerned and confident, Pink’s shoulders were loose and unguarded, her expression pensive but not distant.

“White hates it when I smoke,” Pink said contemplatively. The statement did not require an answer, so Navy stayed quiet and watched Pink Diamond tip her head back and breathe a long column of smoke-rings out of the window. Pink made an odd, derisive sound in the back of her throat. “She says it ruins my voice. I think she’s vocal enough for the both of us, don’t you?”

Navy smiled, her idle hand halting and smoothing down her shirt instead. “Her jaw must be very strong for all the talking she does.”

“Mmhmm,” Pink nodded and exhaled more smoke, eyes lidded and thoughtful. “It’s the singing. I’ll show you one day. She likes to sing for me.”

“I am only a yellow diamond, I’m not worth White Diamond’s song,” Navy replied humbly, and Pink scoffed, her magnificent body tensing with the wild ripple of a cat about to make a sudden lunge. In a lightning-quick movement, she hurled the smoking-pipe out of the window, watching the small dark shape soar across the horizon to land somewhere in the purpling dark gathering along the ground and the spiny shapes of young trees, like pencils stuck in the dirt. Navy eyed her carefully and noted the response.

“You’re worth what I say you are,” Pink Diamond snapped, and Navy made a soft noise of agreement, enough to appease Pink’s anger, as short lived and mercurial as a summer storm, violent… and passionate. Navy worked her way through a deliberate, practised shiver, from her shoulders to her toes, felt an ember of satisfaction in the way her body moved, as lean and strong as a young leopard, unmarred skin smooth and beckoning like poured honey thick from the pot. She was the most beautiful all the yellow diamonds, and Pink Diamond had made certain that she knew it, with the compliment of her favour and undivided attention.

“But you’re right,” Pink murmured to the scarlet-ivory sky. “She would never accept your presence. She never believed in your cut… I was the one who persuaded her that you were necessary.” She bowed her head and gripped the windowsill, tension stringing in her shoulderblades, an etching of rage under her soft body. Navy lost some of her nonchalance, altered her position just a little more.

“We are yours in a way that we are not theirs.” Navy matched Pink’s tone in softness, modulated it into an almost firm statement. “You are the Diamond who gave us life… who shepherded us from the soil… who gave us purpose and existence. We fear you, we love you, we obey you. You are our Diamond.” She rolled over, no longer feeling comfortable in such a vulnerable position, and knelt, placing her hands loosely in her lap, allowing a tinge of possessiveness to enter her voice. Sometimes it amused and excited Pink to hear the airs of a Diamond from Navy. “You are _my_ Diamond.”

“Did I do the right thing?” Pink asked, sounding so unbearably young in a way that Navy had never been permitted to be. She turned then, this Diamond with the frightened soul of a gem only seconds old, as if Navy could reach out and brush the dirt of Pink’s emergence from her soft cheek, peering out of that beautifully cruel, anxious face, her expressive, worried eyes deep and engaging and absorbent, pulling Navy helplessly into their shimmering carmine depths. She was so cruel, cruel in only the way that the most radiant of things could be. There was no mercy in her.

“My Pink Diamond,” Navy whispered, moved, terrified.

“Yellow would know what to do, if she was here,” Pink said. “Yellow –“

She blinked and just like that tears slid down her cheeks, a wanton display of emotion that Pink was allowed to express. “I control White because she thinks only a young gem can bring us forward down the path that Yellow started. But I’m not Yellow, I can’t carry Homeworld alone. She was built… built to be worked. And I-” She shook her head, eyes shimmering. “I was not. I was made to be… loved.”

She snorted, bitterly, and her hands rose up to cover her wet cheeks, unapologetic in her emotions. “And I got her shattered for it. It was my gems that did it, you know. Yellow’s gem was useless. It wouldn’t have been hard for them to slaughter her.”

Navy had heard the story a hundred times. A rebellious rose quartz, a planet called Earth, a chance visit from Yellow Diamond that had gone horribly wrong.

“Blue Diamond despises me,” Pink was crying, self-pitying now. Huge tears streaked down her cheeks. Navy watched in silence. All Pink wanted was an audience. “And White Diamond doesn’t _really_ care about me. I can feel it, every time we fuse.”

Pink buried her head in her hands and sobbed gratuitously. Navy took her cue and rose near silently from the bed, padding to Pink Diamond’s side and gathering her mistress into her arms, murmuring sweet condolences and reassurances, empty words to fill empty air. She stroked Pink's hair, feeling Pink's tears soak into her uniform. The Diamond sniffled, and Navy crooned a soft lullaby to cheer her. Pink Diamond's fingers plucked curiously at the loose front of Navy's uniform, distracted. Then Pink latched onto her, one hand winding painfully into Navy’s long golden hair, the other bruising at her hip. Navy winced. As quickly as they had come, the tears stopped as if they had never been there at all, and Pink’s mouth turned brutishly to Navy’s neck.

“You’re hurting me, Pink,” Navy said into the Diamond’s ear.

“Am I?” Pink said, sounding pleased. Her grip tightened. Navy’s eyes watered as Pink pulled her hair, yanking with increasing force until tears ran freely down Navy’s cheeks and her spine was bent so far that she was struggling to breathe.

Pink Diamond smiled.


	6. Curly

Curly stretched her arms over her head and groaned as her muscles pulled with the pleasurable ache of exertion. A faded warmth tingled in her belly to match the deep hot rays of the sun bathing the lacquered glass casing of the roof, sinking into her joints and making her feel loose and limber. Heat energised her; like lizards, yellow diamonds waned in the cold like limp little slugs. Heat made them hard, heavy, hot and proud, just as their gem-type, be they diamond or Diamond, ought to be.

The developing hamfisted bruises the bismuth had marked her with had shrunk to the size of Curly’s fingerprints when Curly had reassumed her normal size, but Curly still appreciated feeling the dull ache of good and hard use. Bismuths, in Curly’s studied opinion, were the finest example of gem design currently in production. They were strong enough to mark even diamond-flesh, powerful enough to take a hit or three, had the stamina of lions, and their hands could mould to any shape they desired. The only thing that could improve them was just a little more size, so that Curly didn’t have to shrink down so much to partner them. While this one – Curly hadn’t bothered to ask for her designation – had been a little disappointingly quick, her rough enthusiasm had made up for it. Curly had put her as a good enough four out of ten. It had been quite a while, the bismuth had explained as she was shrugging her apron back on, grinning widely, and she’d been ecstatic to hear she’d been assigned to the rapidly developing colony planet the yellow diamonds – Curly specifically – was working on.

Curly was pleased to hear her reputation was spreading. It made things much easier when all parties knew what to expect. She hoped she’d get more offers as the colony expanded with supplementary gems from over the empire. The yellow diamonds would be leaving soon, back to their solitary posts, after the majority of grunt building work was completed. Curly didn’t relish being back under her mistress’ sharp eye. Pyrite was a one. Or a zero.

She rolled over and sunned her back, bathing in the gusts of superheated air from Chills’ work cementing the lacquer Curly had painstakingly painted drifting up over the greenish panels. If Curly twisted over the edge, she could see Chills’ close cropped skull bowed close to the wet lacquer, her superheated hands curling a thin blue-ish flame over it, being careful to dry it nice and evenly, so that the colouration would saturate the building in shades of deep green, darker at the bottom where the lacquer strengthening the insectoid panels against the thin metal frame of the building was thicker, rippling up to a pale peridot green right at the very top.

“No,” said Chills. Curly blinked at her in confusion, and then realised as Chills continued, in her deliberate, careful manner of speech, that she was continuing a conversation that had lapsed almost an hour ago. “I would pick White Diamond.”

“White?!” Curly spluttered. “Why not – I dunno – Pink?” Pink Diamond, now there was a gem better built than the finest bismuth, soft and overspilling in all the right places. Curly did not understand Navy’s problem. If Curly got to bury her face in those tits nearly daily, there was no way she would be so weepy about it. Rumour was that Pink was a bit of a freak, but Curly could appreciate a gem who knew what she wanted from the world. A solid nine out of ten.

“Because if I won the fight,” Chills said slowly, with the air of one explaining something obvious to a stupid child, “I would have defeated Pink Diamond, White Diamond’s beloved, and the most mercurial of the Diamonds. Do you think I would be unpunished?”

“Yeah,” said Curly, who hadn’t thought of that, “But why White? She’s – you know. She wears the shattered remains of gems she’s murdered like _jewellery.”_

White was the only Diamond who bucked the hourglass trend, but Curly still thought she’d be easy enough on the eyes under that shapeless robe. She was slender, but well-proportioned, decent physique. If it wasn’t for the strong possibility that White would eat her shattered gem alive and seemed so frigid she could freeze the lake even in this heat with a single stare, Curly would bump her up to a seven, but as it was, her sheer intimidating factor left her at a six. Curly wouldn’t mind being commanded by White, though. A solid maybe.

“It would be over quickly. The benefits of a mace is that it can shatter relatively efficiently. I would not suffer,” Chills said, mildly.

“Blue, then? Why not fight Blue?” Curly persisted.

 _Blue Diamond._ Curly wasn’t the only yellow diamond who put Blue at a strong ten. Maybe eleven, on a less weepy day. Curly certainly wouldn’t mind some close hand to hand action with Blue Diamond, and she was beginning to feel confident that her efforts were paying off, Blue had spent almost an hour talking about the injectors with her a few weeks ago, which was more attention than she paid to any of the others, even the oh-so-sanctimonious Cheeky who’d derided her news when Curly’d told her. She was a bit small, which meant that Curly would have to be careful not to snap her or anything, but Curly’d had smaller.

The fire flickered between Chills’ hands unconcernedly. “Blue Diamond is unpredictable. Her grief makes her erratic and I have had no formal combat training. I fear she would use me to kill her.”

Curly quietened. Coming from Chills, such a statement was concerning. Even Curly knew that whilst Chills was taciturn on a good day and downright unfriendly the rest of the time, her silence did not necessarily mean that she was not paying attention. Chills’ stubborn passive-aggressive antagonism, close-cropped scalp, and the almost-violent look in her dark gold eyes had Curly rating her at a two. Somehow, Chills left Curly feeling wary, and while danger had its own appeal, it wasn’t the exciting kind. “You – really think that, Chilly?”

Chills lifted one shoulder and lowered it in an approximation of a shrug. Her eyes remained focused on her task. “It is not our place to wonder.”

“Now you sound like Tank, if she ever fucking spoke,” Curly said, disgusted, and flopped back on her back. She idly blew a ringlet off her cheek.

She’d come close to Tank once, only once. Initially, the juvenile, inexperienced Curly had rated her a high six, impressed by Tank’s steady, silent control and powerful physical presence. It had since fallen as Tank snubbed Curly to a three. It rankled, because Curly knew Tank had only been humouring her interest before Curly had got wise to it for Shaky’s sake. Tank had wanted Curly to break in Shaky for her, because at least Curly knew what she was doing and didn’t have fingers the size of small tree trunks. Curly had never minded sharing, and while skinny, terrified Shaky was only a four, Curly wasn’t fussy (there was a particular draw to being someone’s first, too). It’d been – pretty sweet, actually, watching them interact, even if Shakes had chickened out before clothes had even come off. But that had been hundreds of years ago. Tank hadn’t so much as looked at her since.

The flames flickered out in Chills’ hands. Feeling the loss of heat, Curly rolled over and prodded Chills’ shaven head with her foot. “Hey, fireworks. Some of us are tanning here.”

“Perhaps I do,” Chills conceded, ignoring her complaint. “It is not unwise to watch your words.”

“What d’you mean?” Curly said. She paused. Chills tapped her ear significantly, at the little black device implanted there. It was supposed to be a communications device, plus a tracker, so Pink wouldn’t forget where she sent her workers. A little uneasily, she wondered if Chills knew something about the earpiece that she didn’t. Were they dangerous?

“What I said. You would understand if you allowed yourself to.”

“What the _hell_ is that supposed to mean?” Curly demanded. “Am I the only fucking one in this place who doesn’t speak in vague riddles?”

“Hey!” An unfamiliar shout intruded, and Curly turned her head, just a little too slow to avoid the rock flying through the air. The rock clipped her sharply on the jaw and clattered down onto the lacquered panels. Curly snarled a curse and touched her throbbing jaw gingerly. Painful spangles shot up into her brain. Half-glaring, half-squinting, Curly looked down at the thrower, an agate, who had another rock in her hand.

“Yes, you, you filthy piece of compacted organics,” the agate snarled. “Up. You need to lift something for me.”

“Seems my strong right arm is in demand,” Curly joked to Chills, who gave her a flat, unimpressed look. Curly sighed and slid off the roof. Some gems had no appreciation for humour.

The agate threw the rock, and it hit Curly’s shoulder with a solid thud. She hissed. “I’m coming, I’m coming,” Curly snapped out, barely restraining a sharper response.

The agate’s eyes inflamed at the perceived insolence in Curly’s reply, and her gem glowed as she pulled out a long, barbed whip. “What did you say to me, _coal?”_

“Nothing, my Agate,” Curly said, quickly snapping into a salute, her eyes darting nervously to the whip.

“You’re _lying.”_ The agate drew back her arm, and Curly closed her eyes and braced herself for the pain. She still yelped when it struck her, the barbs tearing with ease through the fabric of her uniform and cutting her shin. Chills watched, neither sympathetic nor unfriendly. The agate was tiny in comparison to Curly, but her strike had plenty of power in it.

“Come,” the agate commanded. “We don’t have all day.”

“Yes, my Agate,” Curly said obediently, and followed her. The agate sauntered in front of her, evidently enjoying having a diamond, even a disposable, worth less than a pearl, obey her. Eyeing her swinging hips, Curly rated her a good seven.


	7. Noisy

The yellow diamond Facet-1 Cut-1AI liked facts, and doing things the proper way, and being right. The  _others_ called her ‘Noisy’ because sometimes facts and being right and doing things the proper way included shouting down the opposition who was  _stupid_ and  _ignorant_ and  _didn’t think,_ like that foppish fool Curly – 1AE, she corrected herself swiftly with a little burn of embarrassment at the mental slip – who never took 1AI seriously at all, and it was just so  _infuriating,_ that  _urgh,_ 1AI just wanted to  _hit_ her sometimes, but that was absolutely not part of the proper way to do things, so she didn’t.

She still wanted to, though. But she thought maybe she could be forgiven for that, because it wasn’t like everyone else didn’t want to hit Curly  _– 1AE –_ too.

Right now, though, 1AI had a very important job to attend to, one that Peridot 5QI had entrusted to her specifically, she thought, proudly. Her gem felt tingly and warm on her forehead and her shoulders had stiffened automatically with pride. Cradled preciously against her chest was the file reports for the building progress, to be taken to White Diamond right away.

 _White Diamond._ Noisy restrained a little shiver of delicious awe. White Diamond didn’t need a designation to separate her from any annoying yellow sisters, because everyone  _knew_ who she was and there was absolutely no one like her. White Diamond was utterly unique, and White Diamond was powerful, intelligent, beautiful, remote; the perfect Diamond, always in control, always necessary. 1AI bet  _she_ never would get so angry with Curly that she’d just want to hit her because even Curly would have to listen to White Diamond. She never seemed to get angry, or sad, or frustrated – White Diamond was a chilly, disdainful constant, objective and distant.

Noisy thought she was incredible.

1AI wanted to prove that she was worth the cost of her existence to White Diamond. Everyone knew the disposables were a poor replacement for Yellow Diamond, but the peridots at the shipyard said that Noisy had a gift for their tech, even if she was woefully ignorant. It was only because she hadn’t exactly had the time to puzzle it all yet between hauling trains, but if White Diamond said she could, Noisy would do anything to prove herself worthy of that trust. Yellow Diamond had created the now-failing tech that their society was sorely wounded without – surely, a yellow diamond could learn to fix it? She could be so useful, she could do so much, there was so much that needed fixing and Noisy burned to make herself into what the empire truly needed.

It was her most cherished dream to be given that chance. Noisy clung to the hope that she would  _show_ Curly and the others, one day, that even though her words mixed up when she spoke, and the infinite mystery of humming wires was still easier for her to work through then an interaction that wasn’t a lecture with her own sisters, they would be forced to concede that she could be right, and do things properly in a way they couldn’t. She could show them that she could be like White Diamond – irreplaceable, the perfect pinnacle of effective control.

But now – the task at hand required her attention.

The diamond quarters in the expanding palace were panelled in muted pale lilacs, the neutral colours of the Authority, still new enough that the faint smell of lacquer clung pleasantly to the walls. Noisy liked the smell of new things, fresh paint and just dried cement, the scent of designs realised and progress. Her heeled boots clacked echoingly on polished clean floors, as glossy as a smoothly rounded pearl stone.

Temporary screens had been erected to display slow-moving, distant aristocratic vistas of other fully colonised planets, many of which Noisy didn’t recognise, others she knew only through deduction – like the Hall of Seaglass with its frothy arches and delicate organic-shell inlays, Blue Diamond’s palace on Homeworld, or the elegant shape of Zaria, organised like a spread open flower with its mechanical parts shifting and lifting in a rhythmic motion that made the entire topography of the city planet ripple like delicate petals on waves. The self-perpetuating movement generated energy which powered the whole of Zaria, and was one of the most impressive feats of mystical engineering that Yellow Diamond’s Authority had constructed. It took some concentration to not slow down and gape at the marvels of fully converted colonies on the walls, to look around at the current unfinished one with incredible air of promise.

What sort of marvel would this colony be, once it was finished? 1AI wasn’t likely to see it – they’d need her back to haul cargo trains at the shipyard in Epsilon II soon. This was only a brief reprieve for the disposable diamonds. But still… would one day this colony be displayed on screens, would she walk past it again years in the future and recognise the building blocks that she had helped install, an irrevocable mark that stamped her insignificant presence into the might of the Empire?

It was difficult to feel like 1AI was actually making any tangible effect on the Empire when she was pushing and pulling endless heavy metal containers back and forth in Epsilon II’s biggest shipyard, nothing more than a replacement for a shuttle engine. The work was never finished, and it didn’t specifically need  _her,_ either. Work would flow slower with the temporary use of a big fusion or two instead of Noisy, but it would still go on. But this – breaking ground on the colonies that became the extensions of the Empire was a job that only a diamond could do.

White Diamond’s quarters were the second door in the hall, between Pink and Blue’s. The door was nothing but a massive diamond symbol, white, of course, and a keypad by the door. Juggling the sheaf of slim tablets against her chest, Noisy fought to free a hand to activate the door. A less stubborn gem might have put a few of the reports down, but Noisy just gritted her teeth and shoved them between her chest and the door surface, fumbling at the keypad. It swished open surprisingly fast and Noisy stumbled over the threshold, losing her hold on the reports. In a moment of almost comic horror, Noisy pitched forward into the thankfully empty room as the reports sprayed from her arms.

She hit the ground, her jaw connecting with such force on the hard floor that tears sprang into her eyes. The hit jabbed all the way up into her gem. Noisy yelped and lay there, self pitying for a moment, turning her cheek so that her gem wouldn’t press against the floor.

 _“Ow,”_ Noisy groaned.

Thankfully, the room was deserted. White Diamond wasn’t due to be anywhere else at this time, and logically Noisy had concluded that she was most likely to find the reports in a timely manner if Noisy left them inside her room, especially since Pink Diamond was currently on the other side of the planet, so White Diamond would have no reason to be out. Nevertheless, Noisy had never been more glad to be wrong. Aside from her cape draped over the regal, stiff-backed chair in front of the huge, diamond-sized white table, there was no sign of White Diamond, or any other gem, who had witnessed her fall.

White Diamond’s rooms were set in between Pink Diamond’s and Blue Diamond’s, and was noticeably smaller than the others’, due to the thick soundproofing the yellows had installed to prevent Blue or Pink from being woken by White Diamond’s screaming nightmares. No one wanted a sleep deprived Pink Diamond. Unlike the open plan of Pink’s rooms, White’s had been constructed in a series of defensible blocks, or white and starkly lit, impossible for someone to infiltrate unseen, whilst retaining a sensible amount of privacy. Her sleeping chambers were at the end, containing only a large mattress inset in the floor and pillows that Noisy herself had been lucky enough to pick out. She blushed, remembering smoothing down the misty grey fabrics that would cushion White’s body, specifically hand-chosen to flatter her watchful grey eyes – her best feature, in Noisy’s opinion.

Noisy shifted painfully. One of the reports was digging into her hip. The rest were fanned out in front of her. She squinted at them blearily, and then squeaked in horror. They were all out of order – and White Diamond could come back at any time-!

“ _Shards!”_

With clammy palms, she raced to scoop the reports together. Hastily shoving them in a disorganised bundle, she spotted one last one half-stuck under a grand, beautiful chair with White Diamond’s cape thrown over it. To get the report, Noisy would have to touch the draping end of the cape.

The cape was part of White Diamond’s projection. Noisy had never seen her without it outside. If anyone caught her touching it, she would be shattered, but the cost of leaving the reports scattered around White Diamond’s room seemed nastier than a secret treason she could keep all to herself.

Glancing around quickly, Noisy counted the coast as clear and, heart thundering in her chest, reached out to grab the report. She’d managed to slide it nearly halfway out from under the chair before her knuckle accidently brushed the cape, and Noisy snatched her hand back as if it had been burnt. Blood roaring in her ears, she looked around wide-eyed to see if anyone had miraculously appeared to notice her treason.

There was no one there.

Noisy bit her lip and stared at the white fabric. She had seen White Diamond wearing this, had seen the cape cling close against her frame outlined in the soft, thin material of her loose shift, had seen it whip at her heels when she was summoning the winds she used to fly, folding, caressing her body with every gust of air. It was always in motion, volatile, sometimes streaming away from her, sometimes as close as Noisy sometimes thought of being, as if she could replace the cloak, arms around White’s neck, pressed front to White’s back, only the shift between her and White Diamond, but it would be fine because White wouldn’t be looking at her, with that clear grey gaze that made Noisy tongue-tied and stuttering and hot all over like she felt when Curly –  _1AE –_ argued with her but somehow deeper and hotter and stronger, like fire growing up from her stomach…

Noisy’s mouth had dried out. A pounding champagne flush seared her cheeks, her heart pulsed against her ribcage. She felt herself start to sweat. She could hardly believe that she was even contemplating – if the others found out – if White caught her – if –

Before she could overthink it, Noisy reached to finger the cape’s fabric – surprisingly not very soft, but thick and strong. Sturdy. She could feel the threads under her fingertips, the robust, waterproof weave. Impulsively, Noisy bent down and pressed her face into the cape, breathing in the cold, clean scent – something like the acrylic smell of fresh dried paint, or the very cold smell of the wind, like the way the cold made her teeth ache when she drank ice water from the lake. She inhaled, the scent driving dizzy needles directly into her aching brain.

 _“Oh,”_ said Noisy, very quietly. For the first time in her life, Noisy completely forgot what she was supposed to be doing.

She felt hot all over, but not like when she had finished work and her projection was staticky and painful to hold together, but with little, low charges of frisson electricity. Noisy exhaled and a spark leapt from her lips, extinguished instantly without a mark on the pure white fabric of the cape.

Noisy never even heard White Diamond approach, as soft and silent as a breath of wind.

“And what do you think you’re doing?” A stern, dangerously icy voice asked from somewhere above her.

Noisy leapt out of her skin with a shriek, already gabbling excuses and apologies at the first sight of the bare white foot, slim, even square toenails, very clean, and the trailing hem of the pale, billowing shift White Diamond wore. Her heart plummeted into her stomach. She was shattered – so very, very shattered.

“M-My D-Diamond – I-I-I b-brought-“

Noisy made the mistake of looking up and her eyes got lost somewhere on the way to White Diamond’s face, lingering inappropriately on her looming body, but then White jerked her chin, and Noisy looked into her incandescent eyes and felt any will to exist shrivel. _Oh, shards._ It was unfair that she was so distracting right when Noisy needed to not be _distracted_ the most! Oh, but perfectly _right,_ too, she was _White Diamond,_ fundamentally incapable of being less than the most impeccable judge Homeworld had ever seen!

“If you cannot speak properly in my presence, then don’t bother,” White Diamond snapped, her lip curling. She looked at Noisy with the same sort of disgust that Noisy would expect towards a pile of vomit. “You are  _trespassing._ You are – violating my personal property.”

“M-M-“ Noisy couldn’t even get the words out. She was aware that she was gaping up at White Diamond like a particularly stupid guppy, and White Diamond was looking down at her, and biting her lip, just so, between her teeth. Noisy gulped past an embarrassing shot of heat flaring down her spine.

White Diamond’s thin lips twitched, and she tilted her head as if Noisy were a curious rodent she had just found soiling her carpet. “You aren’t the one I asked to come, are you? I didn’t think you stuttered so much.” She sounded deeply displeased.

“M-My Diamond-?”

Exhaling through her nose, White Diamond summoned her mace with a put upon expression, swinging the huge, heavy, barbaric weapon from one hand as if it was as light as a feather. The blunt stick ended in an ugly spiked ball bigger than Noisy’s head, shades of rippling-grey-black all over, like moonlight on dark water. A little glittering dust fell from the forming mace, like the shards of the last gem splintered under its crushing force. Just the sight of the legendary weapon was enough to claw cold fear into the heart of any gem unlucky to see it.

Noisy cried out and scrambled backwards on her hands and knees, terror roaring to life and promptly drowning out anything else. Her legs tangled in the cape, and White Diamond cocked her head in cruel, mirthless amusement as Noisy struggled to get away. Noisy pleaded shamelessly, still trying to run away even as her body seemed to gain the consistency of lead. Noisy’s chest lurched with her breath, and White only watched, her stance shifting just slightly, muscles gathering to spring, an apex predator before weak and stupid prey.

“Look at you,” White Diamond said.

Her pounce was as sudden and silent as a striking snake. A screech of wind caught her mid-leap, making her hair whip and stream back like a snapping pennant. One moment she was there – the next her mace was slamming down towards Noisy’s head like the crack of doom.

Noisy’s body froze and time went strange and still for several beats.

When the mace stopped inches from her face and then dropped onto her chest instead, almost gently, Noisy sobbed like a child in grateful terror, dimly aware of the echoing of her _screaming, screaming, screaming,_ the ache in her throat, the tears sheeting down her cheeks, the panicky, fluttering glow of her gem, the way her whole body fitted and jerked as she fought not to poof from her fear. At once, she was present in her own body again, White a hazy, godlike shape far above, messily anchored, her heart palpitating, the mace grounding her into her soul.

“Thank-k y-you,” she heard herself saying, “ _Thank y-you,_ p-please d-don’t,  _I’m s-sorry-“_

“You’re pathetic,” White Diamond said flatly. “And I asked you a question. Which one are you again?”

She squinted at Noisy’s gem, running a frankly avaricious eye over the facets. Her free hand drifted to the chains around her neck, and she thumbed one of the shattered gems that hung there, tilting her head as if to visualise Noisy’s gem among them.

“You’re a little shiny,” she muttered, disappointed, “You’d clash with my red.”

The tremendous weight of the mace rested on Noisy’s chest, almost crushingly heavy. Noisy gasped for air, struggling not to hyperventilate. Noisy’s heart was pumping hard, adrenaline was making her vision blurry, her palms were sweaty, she could feel her shirt sticking damply to her skin and her hair plastered to her scalp. White Diamond gazed down at her obvious fear with such virulent scorn that Noisy felt herself physically wither.

“P-Please, I-I’m 1AI,” Noisy begged wetly, “P-P-Please d-don’t shatt-tter m-me, m-my D-Diamond – I’m _s-sorry, I-“_

“Puh-puh- _please,”_  White mocked. She lifted the mace away, slinging it over her shoulder as if it weighed nothing. But then White’s bare foot replaced the mace, her slender but muscled leg revealed by the lapping shift, which parted to accommodate her movement. She pressed down, and Noisy’s chest choked out a whimper despite herself. White Diamond’s eyebrow quirked in surprise.

“All you yellow diamonds really are the same, aren’t you?” White Diamond crooned from her towering height, “Greedy, needythings, too weak to stand alone – just begging to  _go out and get yourself shattered_. Did it ever cross your mind that perhaps you’d be less scared, less cowardly and pathetic, if you’d ever bothered to learn how to not be weak? But no,” and here her face morphed into something truly ugly, as if recalling an ancient argument,  _“_ Homeworldwould  _never_  come to war again, would it? Strength is useless to the modern gem, isn’t it!”

White Diamond’s hand squeezed around the mace’s handle, as if she suddenly was restraining herself from lashing out. There was a pause as White Diamond’s head tipped back and she took the time to release an even breath. Her eyes opened, and her head fell forward to regard Noisy, almost dark, almost contemplative, evaluating Noisy like a piece of meat on display.

There were snot and tears on Noisy’s face, she was shuddering with each breath, and she wanted nothing more than to run away and hide. Feeling the traitorous flush burning ever higher on her cheekbones as White’s stare pinned her and stripped her like a bug, Noisy had never wanted more wholeheartedly for the floor to open up and swallow her sorry gem whole. Her body seemed to have dissolved into hot jelly that bubbled in the base of her stomach and tried to leap directly out of her chest with her dangerously thudding heart. She had never been more terrified in her entire life.

And yet, she found the breath for one last word. “Please,” Noisy whispered.

White Diamond scoffed, but she withdrew and the mace vanished. Noisy sucked in a relieved lungful of air, struggling not to cry again. Physically distant, White regained her implacable impossibility, like a paragon of order.

“It is no odds to me if you live or die,” said White coldly, “but I’m sure you’re hard working.” Her mouth twisted bitterly again. “And we must be efficient little leaders, mustn’t we?”

“I-I a-am,” Noisy assured her, blinking desperately up at her. She didn’t move, too petrified to risk White’s disapproval. Spread out, she endured White Diamond’s dismissive gaze.

“Of course you are,” White agreed with no small degree of contempt, “Pink would have had you taken apart if you were useless. Though, I never understood the point of you anyway. You’d serve better as a stone.”

“A-Anything,” Noisy said, hopelessly, “I-I’d d-do anything that y-you-“ She blinked and amended hurriedly, blushing furiously, “The Authority! – n-needed – I j-just want to be useful, my D-Diamond….”

“Don’t look at me like that,” said White patronisingly, as if Noisy hadn’t spoken at all.

Slowly, White Diamond reached down and laid one fingertip lightly on Noisy’s gem. Noisy’s breath stuttered and caught in her chest. She didn’t dare to breathe. White Diamond was touching her gem – the centre of her being. The fact was so overwhelming that she almost dissipated her form, only the thought of White Diamond’s displeasure stayed her. Fear was rising now, fear that White Diamond would crack her, or shatter her, or bring her to Pink Diamond for Pink Diamond’s cruel amusements, the stupid yellow diamond who had invaded her privacy, had been caught playing with her cape as if White’s adornments were public property.

White Diamond smiled humourlessly and tapped Noisy’s gem, just once. The strike, soft though it was, reverberated through Noisy’s entire being. Involuntarily, she shuddered.

“You were designed to be disposable, after all,” White Diamond said. “Come, get up.”

White Diamond’s words landed like fists, and Noisy instinctively recoiled, shocked and hurt. White Diamond scorned all of them, but Noisy had always felt a special connection to her because of their gem placement, and Navy and Pink seemed to be the same – and well, Noisy had thought –  _what?_ She demanded of herself,  _what did you think, you sharding cluster of chalk?_  She would be lucky to leave this room alive. The yellow diamonds didn’t matter. They were tools, nothing more, tools that happened to speak and feel, but they lived only as poor, ugly replicas of the Authority’s might.

 _Disposable._ They were created to be discarded after use. Nothing more, nothing less.

A strange numbness settled in Noisy then, and something went cold within her. Her dreams, her ideas, her feelings – none of that mattered in the higher scheme of order that White Diamond occupied. Her delusions of being recognised were just that – delusions. Did the hammer long for its wielder’s love? Of course not. It simply existed to perform its function. At once, Noisy felt embarrassed and ashamed that she had ever dreamt of being more, had so fundamentally misunderstood. White Diamond had told her nothing new, Noisy knew that logically – but it was different to hear it from her.

Hesitantly, Noisy curled her legs under herself and sat up on her knees, not wanting to push her luck. She wiped her face and took a moment to breathe deeply before she raised her eyes tentatively to look at White Diamond’s magnificent profile, waiting patiently, silhouetted by the shining light of the window, crowned by spikes and spires of hair that Noisy had always wanted to run her fingers through, those hawklike, intent eyes that had watched her scramble and beg for her life and found it pathetic.

White Diamond kept her power tightly coiled, hidden in her body covered by the shift, bare feet, wild hair. Without her cape, she was somehow more immediate, less distant, yet impossibly far away all at once. White Diamond had turned away from her, only the corner of her eye on Noisy, an almost absent habit of watchfulness now.

She was touching her chains, the gems that hung from them. Noisy had seen her do it before, when she was lost in thought with a peculiar, pensive expression. She was always angrier when she returned to herself, as if the thought that she had ever been burdened by the past was offensive beyond belief. The others thought that the shattered gems were triumphs, victories over traitors, but Noisy had seen them, dark against White’s knuckles as she fidgeted with them. It made no logical sense for White Diamond to keep so intimately on her person the remains of those less than her equal. There were palaces and pearls for ornaments, but to adorn White Diamond’s neck was an honour.

Not something that a _disposable_ diamond would ever attain.

White Diamond’s hand lifted and her fingertip ran over her neck, looping the silver chain around her finger and tugging it out from underneath her shift. Without the cape and the collar it connected to, the shift was loose around the neck, revealing pale glimpses of White’s cleavage. Dangling against her fingers were shattered gems in the casings, all diamond shaped, all  _diamond._

Noisy bit her lip, curiosity mixing with fear and confusion. She wanted to ask questions, but she didn’t dare. The others said her questions were annoying at the best of times, and she didn’t want to aggravate White Diamond, beautiful, terrifying White Diamond. She wondered how they had died.

She wondered if White had killed them.  _Who else?_ Noisy thought, with a little spark of renewed fear. She knew White was a murderer, of course – everyone did, but somehow the reassurance that Noisy simply didn’t matter enough to bother destroying with one swing of White Diamond’s mace was not enough to make Noisy feel safe.

Biting her lip, Noisy glanced at the reports she had been told to deliver. Peridot 5QI was probably expecting her back already, but Noisy didn’t dare interrupt White Diamond while she was thinking. The older gems did this sometimes – became lost in their minds, forgetting to interact with the linear flow of time. Noisy’s manager did it all the time, and had to be called back and reminded of the time and date. But White Diamond had to be older than Noisy’s manager – impossibly older, legend said that she had existed before the stars had lit, and they had taken their shine to mirror her eyes. Logically Noisy knew that was fantasy – but it was hard to deny that the glacial, uncaring points of the stars were exactly like White Diamond’s eyes.

Left with the choice, Noisy didn’t know what to do. Stay and wait for White Diamond to come back to herself, and hope that she wouldn’t notice the time had passed, or try and sneak out while White Diamond was distracted? Just as Noisy was beginning to shift around, regretfully thinking that she was probably going to be shattered very soon, there was a knock on the door.

White Diamond whirled around in a light, quick movement, and remained, balanced on the tip of her toes as if she were about to leap into flight. Her body radiated tension, and she looked furious at being caught daydreaming, a light blaze of colour raising along her cheeks.

Together, they watched the door open, White in bitterly cold fury, Noisy in trepidation.

Standing in the doorway was Chills, dark-eyed, silent, grave, her hands linked behind her back, carrying nothing for White Diamond. It had to be an important message, for her to be entrusted to it verbally alone. Noisy had to shove her fist in her mouth to prevent herself from yelling a confused question, or maybe a warning.

“You.” White Diamond scowled, and with a start Noisy recognised the way she was drawing herself up, in preparation to summon her mace. Chills’ eyes flickered down over White’s body, and just as nonchalantly, she shifted her body, tensing as if prepared to spring into battle. Her hands came out from behind her back and curled into cautious fists, ready to be brought up to defend in an instant.

White Diamond’s head tilted as she saw Chills’ evidently aggressive posture, and bizarrely, she relaxed, one hand drifting up to mess with her hair seemingly without her own knowledge. Her fearsome eyes lidded.

Noisy glanced in between Chills and White Diamond, and slowly became aware of the fact that she was missing something.

“My apologies, my Diamond,” said Chills smoothly in her slow, deliberate voice. Her eyes lingered on Noisy, still kneeling before White Diamond. “I was unaware you were … occupied.”

“What?” White Diamond sounded caustically impatient. She sneered at Noisy. “Oh, that.” Already dismissing the matter, White said, in a markedly different, guarded voice, “ _You_ are late.”

“My Diamond.” Chills bowed her head, but didn’t offer any excuse. Her dark eyes were steady and cautious, her body had the lean tenseness of an animal preparing to run or fight. There was an expectancy about her, a watchfulness that seem to ask whether today was the day she would be asked to choose between her loyalty or her life. Almost absently, her hand strayed to her belt, to the long whip curled up within it.

White Diamond looked at Chills’ wariness with the tremendous tiredness of an immortal being who offered such choices daily, hourly, and considered the answers of little enough consequence, as if Chills was nothing more than another stupid underling in thousands of others. Then her eyes caught Chills’ motion, and fell on the whip.

When they rose again, they were harder, darker, and Noisy was almost certain she imagined a tint of colour in White Diamond’s glittering, hollow cheeks. White’s stance shifted again, predatory, as if she were readying herself for a brawl.

“Leave,” White Diamond said, her eyes never straying from Chills.

Chills inclined her head, saying nothing. She strode forward and grabbed Noisy by the arm, hauling her to her feet none too gently. Noisy squeaked at the rough treatment, fully prepared to launch a blistering tirade about personal space, but then Chills shook her, casting a warning glance towards White Diamond, whose presence spread like tendrils of silent vapour through the atmosphere. Noisy’s mouth closed with a snap.

“Get up, fool,” she hissed in Noisy’s ear as Noisy hesitated, quite certain that White Diamond had meant only Noisy, not Chills. Noisy didn’t want to cause White Diamond any more displeasure.

“Not you, 1AB,” White called, over her shoulder as she turned her back on them. It was almost a purr, if White’s stiltedly awkward, ringingly cold voice was capable of a thing of such smooth warmth.

“She remembers your designation?” Noisy spat back, outraged and horrifically jealous despite herself as Chills all-but-wrestled her out of the door. White Diamond remembered _Chills,_ surly, grumpy Chills who had never gone out of her way to do anything for the Diamonds, Chills who never said a word against the Authority, but whose silent, rough anger and the way she treated the pariah, Navy, was eloquent enough, Chills who Noisy _had_ tried to punch before, because Chills didn’t love them at all and Noisy was just so angry at the way she dared to think about White Diamond like she didn’t matter, Chills who had immobilised her wrists and called her a stupid child.

_She knows Chills, and not me?_

Chills’ face was entirely expressionless, and her voice was flatly monotonous. “She calls me a different one each time. Don’t bother pretending that we matter to them.”

“Each _time-_ Chills – what do you- _oh.”_ White Diamond had been walking away, towards the back of her rooms – and the door to the bedroom. White Diamond had been as undressed as she ever got, missing her cape and collar, and she had been expecting a different yellow diamond – she had been expecting Chills, Chills who was as close to friendly to Navy as Chills ever was to anybody, White Diamond was expecting Chills to come and – and _love_ her.

The door closed firmly behind her and Noisy staggered into the hallway, stunned. She didn’t dare identify the hot, angry feeling bubbling in her chest as jealousy. White Diamond had almost killed Noisy for _amusement,_ and yet she did – _that –_ with Chills? Chills didn’t _care_ about the Authority.

_And the Authority doesn’t care about Chills._

Noisy’s eyes widened as the realisation struck her. Chills didn’t care about White Diamond, and White Diamond didn’t care about Chills. It wasn’t a secret affair, it was a cold, blank service. Logically, she knew she shouldn’t be surprised, still. Everyone said it. They were nothing but functional tools. Why shouldn’t they be applied for more than one use, if their maker wanted them to be?

They were disposable. Logically, that meant they were replaceable, and that emotional attachments were both pointless and inappropriate.

Logic had nothing to do with the way it still felt like being kicked in the chest.


End file.
